Rainy Season

Seasons in Uganda are not identified as Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Instead, there are the rainy seasons and the dry seasons. The rainier of the two rainy seasons is supposed to begin in March. This year it didn't really start until April, although we had a couple of weeks of rain in January. It rains most days during the rainy season, but it tends to only rain for part of the day, not the whole day. It rained last night or early this morning--I didn't check check my watch when I heard the pounding on the roof--but it was still dark. Yesterday, however, was blessedly dry.

In Chicago the joke is that we have two seasons--winter and road construction. To carry the analogy to Ugandan roads, there are two seasons--dust and mud.

I find the biggest challenge of the rainy season to be laundry. Since laundry is washed by hand and hung on the line to dry, rain can foil any hopes of drying the clothes. Specioza washes clothes on Mondays and Fridays. She hangs the wash on the line and I take it down when it's dry. Sometimes Bry'Chell helps, but she's usually still in school when it's time to get the clothes off the line.

In my childhood I did my fair share of putting clothes on and taking clothes off the line. In the days before disposable diapers, diapers were washed (fortunately by machine) and hung on the line to dry. With a steady stream of babies in the house, there were usually diapers to be hung out. Yes, we did have a gas dryer, but Mom thought it was a waste of perfectly free sunlight, not to mention child labor, to dry clothes in the dryer. Unless it was raining the clothes went on the line. In California it didn't rain often. In fairness, Mom did most of the work, but I know how to hang up clothes and take them down.

Friday I was invited to the district competition for the national high school level speech competition--I'll write about that another time--so I wasn't home during the day. Specioza came, did the laundry and hung the clothes out to dry. It rained. It rained hard and heavy for most of the day. In the late afternoon it finally stopped.

Bry'Chell arrived home before I did. She called, as planned, to let me know she had arrived home safe and sound. Since it was Friday, I told her she could have quesadillas for supper and watch a movie. This is the ultimate decadence--to sit in front of the computer watching a movie while eating supper. I'm big on sitting at the table to eat.

However, before this treat, she had to take the clothes down. We have a rack in the guest room for damp (or in this case, soaking wet) clothes that didn't dry before dark. If the rack gets full, the clothes are spread on the floor. Don't worry, it's concrete and clean since Specioza mops it three times a week.

When I finally arrived home, it was late and I was tired. I quickly checked the clothes. There was no chance that they would dry by morning. I knew that meant hanging them out again. Fortunately, Saturday dawned dry and sunny. I rehung all the clothes--some of which I had to ring out first--and they dried before the evening rain came.

While Specioza throws the clothes over the line and anchors them with a single clothes pin (peg here) each, I use Mom's method which mazimizes both efficiency of drying and clothes pin use. Specioza is short and the clothes line is high, so I figure however she wants to put up the clothes is fine by me. If I don't like the way she does it, I should do it myself. On those occasions when I do hang up the clothes, I fall back on the way I was taught. It works. The clothes dry faster using Mom's method than Specioza's method.

Here many people don't have clothes lines. When you walk down the road you see clothes spread over bushes, hung on trees and spread on the grass to dry. Still, the average Ugandan school kid looks neater than her or his American counterpart. Go figure.